As parents, we want the best for our children. We want them to be healthy and successful. When it comes to food, we anxiously hope our kids eat well and adopt healthy eating habits. Things are especially fraught with teenagers, given the host of challenges they already face as emerging adults.
What might help our teenagers eat well? Is it knowledge or control? Conforming to a set of rules or gaining deeper insight into the significance and importance of food? Have you thought about what it takes to develop healthy eating patterns, or what that even looks like?
Grasping the idea of healthy eating patterns may seem difficult, particularly given the influence of diet culture, wellness cultures, “healthism,” and weight bias. It is therefore important that we start with curiosity and compassion as we consider what a healthy relationship with food might look like for teens. This also means calling out diet culture and its approach to health.
Therefore, we need to do a bit of stage-setting. Before we discuss strategies, we need to explore some foundational concepts around healthy eating and what shapes our eating patterns. Having this knowledge will better equip you to implement strategies and to support your teen in developing a healthy relationship with food and their body.
What is healthy eating?
There is no universally applicable definition of healthy eating. That is simply because there isn’t a single perfect way to eat. Each human is unique and unrepeatable; so, too, are their needs and eating patterns.
Even so, we can lay down some general markers as to what healthy eating might look like. It could, for instance, involve:
- Eating foods from all food groups
- Allowing our body to function optimally, without restriction
- Honouring our body’s physical and emotional needs
- Including food just because it’s enjoyable
- Eating enough to sustain our energy and growth needs
- Honouring our health
- Eating in ways that allow us to connect socially
- Eating from a place of respect and kindness towards our bodies
In addition to highlighting what healthy eating might be, we need to acknowledge what it isn’t. Healthy eating is not about eating “perfectly,” following rules, counting calories, restricting food groups, labelling food with moral judgements or controlling our bodies.
Nor does it mean deferring to dieting schemes that ignore an individual’s needs and circumstances. An important point to finish on is that what we eat doesn’t make us a “better” person. What we eat does not determine our value or worth as a human.
What shapes our eating patterns?
Now that you have a clearer view of what healthy eating might look like, we can begin to consider what shapes our eating patterns.
You wouldn’t be alone if you immediately think about what or how much someone eats. But I want to broaden your view on what shapes our eating habits. As we look at the bigger picture, we don’t disregard nutrition. Instead, we consider all the factors that influence what we eat and how we feel about nourishing our bodies. This will help us act as guides and cheerleaders for our teens.
Some of those factors include:
- Thoughts
The thoughts we have about food and how we relate to it shape our interactions with what we consume. Such thoughts can be helpful, flexible, judgmental, rigid, neutral, or pleasing. The nature of our inner dialogue about food can significantly impact the choices we make and how satisfied we feel when eating.
- Nutrition facts
The way we interpret nutrition facts can leave us anxiously following strict rules and feeling guilty for making a “wrong” choice. Alternatively, we can hold onto nutrition facts in a balanced way, applying them with kindness and flexibility.
- Interoceptive awareness
Bodies are wonderful communicators, always letting us know their ever-changing needs. And yet for many people, listening to and responding to bodily signals or appetite cues has become difficult. Our connection, ability to trust, listen and be responsive to our body’s signals has a significant impact on our eating patterns.
- Body image
How we feel about our bodies also impacts our food choices. Respect for our bodies helps us to develop connection and responsiveness to their needs. Alternatively, a negative body image can weaken a person’s trust in their body, leading them to ignore or even deprive it.
- Social eating
We don’t eat in isolation. Food is a social event: it facilitates connection, helps us celebrate, grieve, and honour our cultural or religious beliefs. Having positive social eating experiences can benefit our relationships with food and others. Alternatively, being judged by others for what or how much we eat may induce us to avoid certain foods or social situations.
- Emotions
Eating is an emotional experience. When approaching food from a non-judgmental stance, we can appreciate and enjoy nourishing our bodies. We can allow ourselves opportunities to eat for emotional reasons and move on with our day. On the other hand, clinging to judgments about food and our body may burden us with guilt and shame, creating or sustaining disordered eating patterns.
Other factors might include mental health, mood, health conditions, neurodiversity, income, cooking skills, trauma, medications, lifestyle, education, diet culture, weight stigma, or access to food. It’s impossible to cover all these in detail. But as you can see, eating isn’t simply about what and how much we eat or following a set of rules.
As parents, we can focus on supporting our teens in cultivating a positive, respectful relationship with their bodies and food. This will ultimately steer them down a path of developing healthy and enjoyable eating patterns.
What characterises a healthy relationship with food?
What might you notice if your teenager enjoys a healthy relationship with food? The following is a list of some common signs.
- Regularity and consistency
- Adequacy and variety in their diet
- Eating a wide array of foods with minimal reluctance
- Participation in social and family meals
- Body respect and connection
- Honouring their appetite
- Enjoyment and appreciation of food
- Honouring their health and individual needs
- Flexible approach to food and nutrition knowledge
- Honouring cultural and religious traditions
- Eating patterns that vary depending on mood, schedules, energy, health, etc.
Of course, this is a general list and therefore, not all points will be applicable to every individual.
If you’ve reached this point, I hope you’ve found this baseline information helpful. I wonder what stood out to you? Were any of your ideas around healthy eating challenged, or did this reinforce your own ideas?
Now I imagine you are eager to get to the strategies. Please see my next blog post, Practical ways you can support your teenager to have a healthy relationship with food.
